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Let's rewrite season 5...well, not physically DO it, but, you know what I mean...

Ok, I'm not *ACTUALLY* suggesting that we actually write scripts or anything, but you know how the Star Trek Phase II people are essentially making "TOS: Season 4"? Imagine for a moment doing the conceptual reverse. What if season 5 was remade as a fan film series.

Yeah, yeah, I realize that's impossible and I'm not suggesting we do it. But it's an interesting intelectual puzzle.

We all know what happened in Season 5. Some good, a lot of meh, a disturbing level of flat-out-bad. So assume you decided to retroactively remove it from continuity, and start over again at season 5, episode 1, with the same exact situation we were left with at the end of Season 4:

Both wars are over, Sheridan's president and married, Garibaldi's reunited with his lost love, Ivonova's alive, and Marcus is dead. B5 is for all intents and purposes the capital of the galaxy.

Now what?

Start from scratch. You can save such S5 storylines as you like, dispense with ones you didn't, and introduce new things from whole cloth. I have my own ideas of where I'd run with the story, but I'm interested to hear what you guys think.
 
Man, you guys don't jump into the pool easily, do you?

Ok,

-I'd keep Ivonova, if I were doing it all over again.

-I'd have some real awkwardness between Garibaldi and Sheridan. I don't care if Garibaldi wasn't in his right mind, it's not something Sheridan would be able to just brush aside, and it's not something Garibaldi would forgive himself for easily.

-No stupid standalones. It's really late in the game to be wasting our time with "Mac and Bo."

-I would probably keep the Hyach Do episode, but I'd transplant it to the Centauri, thus bringing truth to Kosh's "They are a dying people" line.

-I would introduce the running thread that B5 is kind of falling apart. It was built on a budget, people skimped, and it's been through a hell of a lot more stress and strain than was ever intended. A significant amount of money is spent on keeping it going and preserving it as a site of historical importance, but obviously that's not gonna' work.

- I would keep Garibaldi on Mars, on a kind of "Helo Plot" for the season. He'd be head of intel for the ISA, but he'd be using Edgars Industries' long fingers and resources to do that. We'd see a lot of Lise and #1. This also makes his slide into alcoholism a bit more believeable, as there's no way folks on the station would have missed it. He will VISIT the station fairly frequently, but he's not based out of there anymore. Both Sheridan and Garibaldi are more comfortable with it that way. (See "Awkwardness" above).

- The capital of the ISA will *NOT* be on Minbar. There's no way Earth would agree to that, ever. The best location for the capital of the ISA is B5, and failing that (As B5 grows less and less functional), on Epsilon III itself. To this end, Drall puts The Great Machine to work terraforming the planet for the EVENTUAL transfer of headquarters from B5 to the planet.

- Lannier would not go bad, he wouldn't try to kill sheridan. He'd still be a love-sick puppy, though. He might join the rangers, though.

- New Ranger Recruits will be training on the station, in addition to Tuzanor, and the facility being constructed on EEIII.

- The Telepath arc would be completely different. Basically Lyta demands a homeworld for Teeps, and Sheridan says "Sure, we've got one right over here." The EA immediately balks at this, as does the Corps. This quickly leads to a crisis, which focuses on Lyta, and it quickly broils over into The Telepath War. Because of the tenuous newness of the ISA, it can't get involved in the conflict, so this would play out a bit like the Narn/Centauri war from Season 2, though we'd see a lot more of it. They can covertly help out, however, mostly through Garibaldi surrepticiously feeding info to Lyta. Ultimately this would lead to Bester's death camps being exposed, the end of the psicorps, and the collapse (Probably) of the interim EA government still reeling from the civil war. The next government would be a bit more amenable to the ISA, as the ISA never exposed its involvement in the war.

- The Drakh/Centaur arc would play out pretty much as is.

So: 22 episodes:

1-7: principle storyline divided between the establishment of ISA diplomacy and whatnot, and the worsening situation with Lyta and her Telepaths.
8-13 - The Telepath War. Lyta dies in the end, of course.
14-19: The Centauri arc
20/21: "David Sheridan's Kidnapped, and we've got to rescue him, oh no, now John and Delenn are captured," etc.
22: sleeping in light

I'd be tempted to edit Sleeping in Light slightly. At the very least, we'd have to say the station was being destroyed because it was falling apart and not salvagable, not because it is a hazard to navigation, which never made much sense (Space is really really big, after all)

If I had my druthers, though, I'd probably partially reshoot it, so it would contain all the same basic stuff it now has, but I'd have "The Last Supper" culminate with B4 showing up, carrying a Valenized Sinclair, and Zathras. B4 headed forward in time from when they stole it, prior to heading back into the past. Valen/Sinclair says his goodbyes, and offers to take anyone who wants to "Sail beyond the sunset" with him along. Ivonova goes. One or two others might go. Then B4 disappears again. Then the episode proceeds as normal, and ends as it always did.

So that's my massive redux of the season. What do you folks think?
 
Man, you guys don't jump into the pool easily, do you?

No offense, but simply not interested. You don't like season 5. We get it. It's abundantly clear. However, it is what it is.

Jan

Oh, none taken.

I'm more of a Monday Morning Quarterback than I am a "Bitch and Moan" critic. Complaining about how bad something is has little appeal for me. It's more interesting to try and find a way to fix something - even if you have no way of doing it - than it is to just say "That sucked" and leave it at that.

"Ok, that wasn't very good. How could it have been done better?"

That's all.
 

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